Chicago Tribune’s Social Media Strategy Yields More Fans, More Traffic

Faithful Poynter Online readers may have seen last Thursday’s article describing how Twitter buzz helped the Chicago Tribune break a story.

The Trib’s made a concerted, focused effort to incorporate social media as part of its news gathering and audience building. Perhaps the most brilliant part of the strategy has been to create Colonel Tribune, a persona that represents the company in on Digg, Twitter and elsewhere.

Since introducing the Colonel six months ago, the Tribune has reportedly seen an eight percent increase in pageviews. Not bad. (Make of the Alexa graph what you will.)

In this interview by marketing specialist Andy Sernovitz, Daniel Honigman and Bill Adee of the Tribune describe how they made Colonel Tribune a media star. Heck, he’s even going to SXSW 2009 as an invited panelist.